May I Recommend…

Crayola No Spill Watercolors

Oh. my. goodness. Talk about genius design. The white strip along the front comes out, and you get it wet and put it back. The two brushes have thick, almost foam tips. The little pots have lids which flip back and fit neatly into little slots along the back. They also have a small hole that you stick the brush in for about a second, and it comes out with color on it. Once you paint, you run the brush along the wet strip to clean it off.

So there’s no paint to spill, no cup of water to rinse in (and potentially knock over), no brushes to get forgotten and all crunchy (I’m pretty sure that even if you left these, you could just rinse them later and it would come out. Or, it would just become part of the brush and not influence later colors.)

The only flaw is that the rinse of pad is a titch small, and if there’s a lot of color on the brush, it’s difficult to get it all off. But we noticed that the colors don’t mix too much in that case. And if it really bugs you, a quick run under the faucet washes the brush right off.

AND, most importantly, they’re on clearance at Target right now (10-28-10) for $1.98. I grabbed a bunch for last minute birthday presents. Go, now!

I love playing classical music in our house. I just play it in the background while the kids are playing, we rarely talk about it unless one of the girls asks a question about a piece or makes a comment.  We listen to all flavors of classical, and the girls are kind of developing a taste for what tones they like.  Amazon has two classical music compilations for SUPER cheap right now. The 99 Most Essential Grieg Masterpieces, and The 99 Most Essential Mendelssohn Masterpieces. They’re each $2.49, which is somewhere around a $95 savings over if you bought each song individually. Both are fantastic, with lots of variety. The 99 Most Essential Tchaikovsky Masterpieces is also on sale for $5, if he’s more your taste. You can’t go wrong with the Nutcracker and Swan Lake!

Also wonderful, child friendly, (and cheap!) are Prokofiev: Peter and The Wolf/Carnival of the Animals and Other Great Children’s Classics. Carnival of Animals is so fun to listen to and have the kids figure out which animal the musicians are being. And Peter and the Wolf is just wonderful, but I do recommend David Bowie Narrates Peter And The Wolf. It’s a little more pricey (but still under $10), but HELLO! DAVID BOWIE!

Big Pumpkin

This is another Halloween favorite at our house. (To be honest, we read it year round.) The story of a witch who needs the help of her friends to pick her oversized pumpkin, it has catchy repetition, and cute illustrations.  It also encourages working together and not discounting the little guy, if you’re into that.

Ghosts in the House!

We have a plethora of Halloween books in our house. A plethora I say. Many of them are character books (Handy Manny, Dora, Backyardigans), which is fine, but it also means they fall out of favor pretty quickly as the fickle likes and dislikes of the little ones sway.  So this year I’ve been trying to find Halloween books that are a bit more universal. Enter Ghosts in the House. It’s a gorgeous (seriously, check out the pictures below) book about a little girl who finds ghosts in her house, and what she decides to do about them. (Hint, she ends up with lovely new linens.)  It’s got ghosts and a witch without being scary, and it’s a fun, unexpected story.

More pictures, just because they are LOVELY.

TRIANGLE CARD HOLDERS – SET OF FOUR

My girls love to play card games, but can’t hold more than 2 cards in their hands at a time- and 2 is kind of pushing it. That means that they have to lay their cards out in front of them, which is helpful for manipulating the game in any given direction (if you’re into that), but does take something away from the overall concept of the game. These are the solution to that problem. They’re inexpensive, easy to hold, easy to get cards in and out of, and they make it more difficult to cheat. So you make the choice.